Captain Future 08 - The Lost World of Time (Fall 1941) Read Free Page B

others in that ship."
    "I'll soon see," Curt said.
     

     
Chapter 3: The Cry from the Past
     
    FROM his belt, Future took a flat, disklike device. He turned the switch on it. An aura of radiant force enveloped him. He began to disappear. This was one of the scientific wizard's most precious weapons. The little mechanism could make him invisible for a few minutes, by giving his body a charge of force that caused all light to be refracted around it.
    Wholly invisible and in total darkness, Curt silently stepped past the young Earthman and into the youth's ship. Long training enabled him to move as confidently by hearing as by sight. He listened inside the ship. There was no one in it.
    He went back to the newcomer. Standing in front of him for a few moments, Captain Future began to become visible again as the effect wore off. First he was a cloudy shape, then rapidly became completely visible.
    The young Earthman started back with a terrified cry as he saw Curt materialize before him. He shrank even more when Grag, Otho and Simon emerged from their concealment. With awe in his eyes, he faced Curt Newton and the weird trio of Futuremen.
    "Who are you and what are you doing here?" Curt demanded. "Speak quickly! You know that I permit no one to land here without permission."
    "I know!" exclaimed the young Earthman hastily. "But I had to come and ask your help. My name's Brad Melton."
    "If you wanted to ask my help, why didn't you send your request to the System President?"
    "This fellow's a spy of some kind!" Otho hissed ominously.
    "No one would have believed my story," Melton answered. "I don't know whether even you will believe it, but I had to come to you. Captain Future, it's not help for myself that I want. I'm bringing a message from people who do need help and need it terribly, a whole race that's faced with an awful choice between ghastly tragedy or total destruction."
    Curt Newton's gray eyes narrowed unbelievingly.
    "What are you talking about? Where are these people you speak of?"
    Melton gulped. "They're a hundred million years in the past."
    Captain Future stared suspiciously at the young Earthman.
    "Naturally you can't expect me to accept that without some substantiating evidence. How could people a hundred million years in the past communicate with you?"
    Melton's eyes wavered.
    "I don't know how they did it," he confessed.
    "You don't know?" exploded Otho. "Fiends of Pluto, is this a crazy joke? If it is —"
    "Wait, Otho," said Curt Newton. His gray eyes swung back to the excited face of the young Earthman. "We can discuss this more freely down in the laboratory. Come along, Melton."
    Curt's tall figure led the way toward the sunken steps nearby. The Brain glided along beside him and Brad Melton followed, between lithe Otho and clanking Grag. They descended through an airlock into the great main laboratory that lay beneath the window in the crater floor.
    Melton looked around wonderingly. He realized that he was lucky to be one of the few outsiders ever to enter this legendary place.
    This big, bright room carved out of the solid rock was a place to stir wonder. It was a laboratory, the finest in the System. Tail generators, transformers, atomic converters, synthesizers and furnaces loomed around the walls. Squat, massive electro-telescopes bulked big and shining. The rest of the equipment Melton could not identify. That was not remarkable, for no other scientists but the Futuremen had ever seen special instruments such as those Curt and the Brain were always developing.
     
    CURT NEWTON took off his helmet and tossed it aside. Two tame animals came ambling up and inspected it. One of the pets was a "meteor-mimic," a fat, little, white beast who suddenly changed himself into an exact replica of the helmet, the cells of his body magically taking new shape by the strange camouflage faculty of this species. The other pet was a moon-pup, a sharp-nosed, beady-eyed little gray beast, a non-breathing species that